Amateur Night

“The sudden bisociation of an idea or event with two habitually incompatible matrices will produce a comic effect, provided that the narrative, the semantic pipeline, carries the right kind of emotional tension. When the pipe is punctured, and our expectations are fooled, the now redundant tension gushes out in laughter, or is spilled in the gentler form of the sou-rire.” – Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation*

Okay, so this isn’t the only thing that came to mind when I watched an amateur comedy show recently – editing got involved, too.

The show was what you might expect: mediocre comedy with a highlight here and there, mostly jokes on adult themes, body parts and fluids, etc. But comedy, both good and bad, interests me because of its creativity.

Comedy has been a point of reference for those interested in the creative act, especially those who approach art and culture through the lens of psychoanalysis, since the 19th century. Creatively speaking, comedy is the merging of two “habitually incompatible” lines of thought that end up in that non-violent release of tension, aka laughing.

To do this well, to get people rolling in the aisles, the incompatibilities must be “implied in the text.” If you make it explicit (i.e. over-explain the structure upon which the joke is built), you “destroy the story’s comic effect.”** We all know that person who makes the funniest joke not funny by reversing the order of the joke’s elements or explaining the joke’s premise in too great detail. They’ve punctured Koestler’s pipe in too many places. The tension is diffused before that pivotal moment of release – it’s all drip, drip, instead of the desired gush.

For writers, this comes down to the fact that a good joke must be well edited. You can’t give too much away too early, and the punch line can’t be blurted out without the build. Sure, a good comedian must have stage presence and good delivery, too, but even the latter is built on giving the audience time to develop that inner tension based on the smallest number of words up front. Marketing copywriters work with this principle daily – when your audience isn’t expecting what’s coming, the cathartic effect makes them want to pay attention to what you have to say next. And that’s good business.

*p. 51, Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, The Macmillan Company: New York, 1964.
**p. 36, Koestler.